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ART “4” “2”-DAY  31 March
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DEATHS:  1927 MARCH — 1837 CONSTABLE
BIRTHS: 1885 PINKAS — 1910 SEAGO
^ Born on 31 March 1885: Julius Mordecai Pinkas (or Jules Pascin), US Expressionist painter, draftsman, and printmaker of Bulgarian birth, active in France, who died on 01 (02?) June 1930. — {Did he ever consider painting a baboon from the rear?}
— He attended secondary school in Vienna, returning in 1901 to Bucharest, where his family had settled, and working briefly in the office of his father’s grain-merchandizing business. He was, however, already becoming passionately interested in drawing, for which he showed precocious talent. At the age of 16 he became the lover of a woman who ran a brothel and was allowed by her to draw the residents. In 1903 he moved to Munich, where he attended the art school run by Moritz Heymann.

LINKS
The Turkish Family (1907, 61x51cm) _ A group of eight women crowds together convivially. Their protective stance and the bright red dress call attention to the youngest, perched on a chair at the center. A slim, fashionably dressed woman holds a small dog and the plume on her chic blue hat points to the only man in the scene. A dreamy cherub floats toward him as if blessing his good luck with women. The man bears a slight resemblance to the artist, and the picture may refer, in part, to Pascin’s pride in having had a Turkish wet nurse. Pascin was a central figure in the social and cultural life of the cafés and studios of Montparnasse. He soon became well known among Jewish artists in the neighborhood, who looked to him as an example of an accomplished Jewish artist.
Odd Couple in a Waiting Room (1908; 1106x724pix, 210kb)
Two Small Girls (1908; 510x1103pix, 99kb) — Young Girl in Red (1912; 1056x858pix, 217kb)
— Cuban Rider (1917; 1121x1008pix, 240kb) — The Good Samaritans (1917; 1021x926pix, 243kb)
Young Boy (1922; 938x774pix, 186kb)
— Alfred Flechtheim Dressed as a Toreador (1927; 1123x843pix, 183kb)
107 images at Webshots
^ Died on 31 March 1927 (or in 1914?): Vicente March y Marco, Spanish painter born on 27 (22?) December 1859. — {Would the march of time have marked a pause for him to live one more month if his name had been Vicente April y Marco?}
— Nace en Valencia y se forma artísticamente en la Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de esta capital, teniendo como profesores a Gonzalo Salvá y a Francisco Domingo Marqués. En 1876 oposita a una plaza de pensionado en Roma con el lienzo Desembarco en Valencia de Francisco I tras la derrota de Pavía, quedando en segundo lugar, por lo que, alentado por su profesor Francisco Domingo, en 1887 se traslada a Roma por sus propios medios, teniendo como compañero de viaje a Constantino Gómez.
      Una vez en Roma se instala en los talleres del Palazzo Patrizi, situados en el 53-B de la entrañable via Margutta, compartiendo estudio con un numeroso grupo de artistas españoles, casi todos ellos valencianos, entre los que destacan Poveda, Peyró, Puig Roda, Pedro Serrano, Sánchez Barbudo, Manuel Muñoz Casas, y los hermanos Benlliure con quienes le unirá una gran amistad de por vida, completando su formación artística en la academia Chigi. En Italia, durante el verano, pasa largas temporadas en Venecia, en Nápoles, en Asís con los Benlliure, y, sobre todo, en Subiaco, población de aspecto medieval cercana a Anticoli Corrado, residencia permanente esta última de su buen amigo y compañero Mariano Barbasán.
      Influido por el ambiente de los círculos artísticos españoles en Roma, cultiva principalmente los temas costumbristas italianos de los siglos XVII y XVIII . Posteriormente y a raíz de un viaje realizado por Marruecos y Egipto desarrolla una etapa con escenas marroquíes y orientalistas. En 1881 obtiene la medalla de plata de la Exposición Regional valenciana con el lienzo Una visita al estudio. A partir de 1888 expone regularmente en Berlín y Munich, obteniendo diversos premios. En 1893 su acuarela La Hilandera (480x333pix, 32kb) obtiene la medalla de plata en la Exposición Internacional de Roma.
      En 1894 trabaja para los álbumes dedicados a S.M. la Reina de España y a S.A. Imperial de Alemania. En 1.903, a los pocos años de haber contraído matrimonio, deja Roma y fija su residencia en una pequeña población cercana a Xátiva donde reside su hermano Rafael, farmacéutico de profesión, y la familia de su esposa. Allí continua su obra pictórica hasta su fallecimiento.
      Entre sus obras cabe destacar, aparte de las anteriormente citadas y de las cuyos enlaces están al último: Un bautizo en España, Las tres edades,, En el mercado, Plaza del mercado de Subiaco, Riña de gallos en Argel, La egipcia, Lección de música, Visita a la casa del niño, La esclava, Viejo árabe leyendo, El abuelo, El prólogo, La almea, Un labrador de la huerta, Sí vendrá, Mercado de las flores de Valencia. (los enlaces de este párrafo son de fotos en blanco y negro).

Self-Portrait of head (480x375pix, 23kb)
Self-Portrait head and shoulders (480x404pix, 12kb)
Self-Portrait half length (480x317pix, 18kb)
A Roman Courtyard In Summer (42x27cm; 1000x591pix, 159kb) — Las Tres Edades (445x640pix, 33kb)
El prestidigitador (555x826pix, 69kb) — Vendedora de frutas (491x318pix, 27kb)
La Ciociara (480x296pix, 18kb) — La gallina ciega (414x672pix, 48kb)
El músico de aldea (428x640pix, 55kb) — Campesinos (399x640pix, 47kb)
97 images at Vicente March site

^ Born on 31 March 1910: Edward Brian Seago, British painter who died in 1974. — {On his way to visit foreign countries, Seago did to sea go.}
— Seago was largely self-taught, although he did receive some guidance and training from Bertam Priestman, RA, and spent a short time taking evening classes at the Norwich School of Art. Seago spent much of the 1930s working with the touring circus and the ballet in London, recording the excitement and movement of the acts set before him. It was during this period that he had his first painting accepted by the Royal Academy for the summer exhibition. He was commissioned in to the army during the Second World War and recorded the Italian campaign. On returning to London he exhibited a number of these works with Calnaghi, and had a sell out show. His success is easy to understand when you look at his work, the paintings communicate with the audience, each brushstroke captures atmosphere with great sensitivity and sincerity. Highly regarded as a traditionalist, the inspiration for his landscape paintings comes from painters such as Boudin, Turner, and Constable. His affection and understand of nature married with his total command of his craft, be it in oil or watercolor, provides a spontaneity that demands attention. Seago traveled widely during his life capturing the light of countries such as Hong Kong, France, Sardinia, Italy, Morocco, and Portugal.
— Seago was a painter of landscapes, seascapes and flowers. He was also a watercolorist and is considered a Postimpressionist. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists from 1946, and of the Royal Watercolors Society from 1959. In 1946 he presented paintings giving a narrative history of the Italian war. In 1957, Seago presented canvases he had realized during the world tour of the Duke of Edinburgh. Essential to a landscape artist, he remained faithful to an impressionistic atmosphere, attempting to capture the rapid touches from the shimmering of light, made to sometimes bathe together in a blur like that of Turner. He liked to translate English landscapes in particular like those of Norfolk, but also painted much from abroad. In 1968 Seago acquired 'Ca Conca', a villa apartment in the elegant yachting resort of Porto Cervo on the Costa Smeralda, Sardinia.

LINKS
A Red House, Venice (66x51cm; 2/5 size, 135kb _ ZOOM to 4/5 size, 518kb)
Evening After the Storm in Venice (32x50cm; 3/4 size)
Dusk on the Grand Canal (46x61cm, 2/5 size _ ZOOM not recommended to mushy 4/5 size)
Olba, Sardinia (30x40cm; 900x678pix, 55kb)
A Wet Day, Dordrecht (741x896pix, 90kb)
The Bridge at Conflans, Ste. Honorine, Yvelines (46x61cm; )
The Harbour, Bonifacio (66x91cm; 500x700pix plus frame, 127kb) _ detail (590x900pix, 97kb) boats
Midsummer, San Antonio (51x76cm; 394x600pix, 31kb)
Thames Barges on the Hard - Pin Mill (41x61cm; 392x600pix, 30kb)
A London Canal (30x40cm; 400x535pix, 31kb)
Last light on the Orwell, Suffolk (41x61cm; 397x600pix, 18kb)
Afternoon, boats on the Thames (51x76cm; 390x600pix, 22kb)
^ Died on 31 March 1837: John Constable, English Romantic painter specialized in Landscapes, born on 11 June 1776, assistant to Claude Lorrain. Constable, with J.M.W. Turner, dominated English landscape painting in the 19th century. He is famous for his precise and loving paintings of the English countryside (e.g., The Hay-Wain, 1821), which he sketched constantly from nature. After about 1828, he experimented with a freer and more colorful manner of painting (e.g., in Hadleigh Castle, 1829).
— Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, the son of a well-to-do mill owner. An early interest in drawing was encouraged by the connoisseur Sir George Beaumont and the etcher and draftsman J. T. ("Antiquity") Smith, and in 1799 Constable traveled to London and entered the Royal Academy Schools. He exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1802 and began making regular sketching and painting trips to rural parts of central and southeastern England, developing his style of plein-air sketching. Larger, more finished compositions were worked up in the studio, and in 1819 Constable exhibited at the academy the first of his sixfoot canvases showing scenes from the Stour River valley. He was elected an associate of the academy in 1819 but not a full member until 1829. Inclusion of three paintings in the Paris Salon of 1824 brought him to the excited attention of French artists, who saw in his work a new model of fidelity to nature. In later life, the vivid naturalism of his landscapes gave way to a looser, more expressionistic style. The lectures on landscape painting he presented in his last years, from 1833 to 1836, preserve a personal account of his theories and practices. One of the greatest British landscape painters, John Constable devoted his attention to the familiar scenery of his native Suffolk, Hampstead, and Salisbury. His nostalgic vision of the English countryside is for many people an ideal of rural England. His distinctive approach to landscape depended on long and close observation and study, particularly of clouds and light effects, which has been seen as an influence on the later Impressionists. Constable was strongly opposed to the setting up of a National Gallery, arguing that artists should not study the art of the past but nature itself. Although famous for his studies direct from nature, Constable's large landscapes which he called his ‘six-footers’ were all painted in his London studio.
— Constable ranks with Turner as one of the greatest British landscape artists. Although he showed an early talent for art and began painting his native Suffolk scenery before he left school, his great originality matured slowly. He committed himself to a career as an artist only in 1799, when he joined the Royal Academy Schools and it was not until 1829 that he was grudgingly made a full Academician, elected by a majority of only one vote. In 1816 he became financially secure on the death of his father and married Maria Bicknell after a seven-year courtship and in the fact of strong opposition from her family. During the 1820s he began to win recognition: The Hay Wain (1821) won a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1824 and Constable was admired by Delacroix and Bonington among others. His wife died in 1828, however, and the remaining years of his life were clouded by despondency.
      After spending some years working in the picturesque tradition of landscape and the manner of Gainsborough, Constable developed his own original treatment from the attempt to render scenery more directly and realistically, carrying on but modifying in an individual way the tradition inherited from Ruisdael [1628 – buried 14 Mar 1682] and the Dutch 17th-century landscape painters. Just as his contemporary William Wordsworth [1770 – 23 Apr 1850] rejected what he called the ‘poetic diction’ of his predecessors, so Constable turned away from the pictorial conventions of 18th-century landscape painters, who, he said, were always ‘running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand'. Constable thought that ‘No two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world', and in a then new way he represented in paint the atmospheric effects of changing light in the open air, the movement of clouds across the sky, and his excited delight at these phenomena, stemming from a profound love of the country: ‘The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things. These scenes made me a painter.’
      He never went abroad, and his finest works are of the places he knew and loved best, particularly Suffolk and Hampstead, where he lived from 1821. To render the shifting flicker of light and weather he abandoned fine traditional finish, catching the sunlight in blobs of pure white or yellow, and the drama of storms with a rapid brush. Henry Fuseli [1741 — 16 Apr 1825] was among the contemporaries who applauded the freshness of Constable's approach, for C. R. Leslie records him as saying: ‘I like de landscapes of Constable; he is always picturesque, of a fine color, and de lights always in de right places; but he makes me call for my great coat and umbrella.’
      Constable worked extensively in the open air, drawing and sketching in oils, but his finished pictures were produced in the studio. For his most ambitious works — ‘six-footers’ as he called them — he followed the unusual technical procedure of making a full-size oil sketch, and in the 20th century there has been a tendancy to praise these even more highly than the finished works because of their freedom and freshness of brushwork.
      In England Constable had no real sucessor and the many imitators (who included his son Lionel Bicknell Constable [1828-1887]) turned rather to the formal compositions than to the more direct sketches. In France, however, he was a major influence on Romantics such as Delacroix [26 Apr 1798 – 13 Aug 1863],on the painters of the Barbizon School, and ultimately on the Impressionists.
—   John Constable was one of the major European landscape artists of the XIX century, whose art was admired by Delacroix and Géricault [26 Sep 1791 – 26 Jan 1824] and influenced the masters of Barbizon and even the Impressionists, although he did not achieved much fame during his lifetime in England, his own country. John Constable was born in East Bergholt, Suffolk, the fourth child and second son of Ann and Golding Constable. His father was a prosperous local corn merchant who inherited his business from an uncle in 1764. Constable was educated at Dedham Grammar School, where he distinguished himself more by his draughtsmanship than his scholarship. In 1793 his father decided to train him as a miller and, consequently, Constable spent a year working on the family mill, which helped him to determine his course of life: he would be an artist.
        In 1796-1798 he took lessons from John Thomas Smith [1766-1833] and later from George Frost, who supported his love of landscape painting and encouraged him to study Gainsborough's works. In 1700 he entered the Royal Academy Schools. As a student he copied Old Master landscapes, especially those of Jacob van Ruisdael. Though deeply impressed by the work of Claude Lorrain [1602 – 23 Nov 1682] and the watercolors of Thomas Girtin [1775 – 1802], Constable believed the actual study of nature was more important than any artistic model. He refused to "learn the truth second-hand". To a greater degree than any other artist before him, Constable based his paintings on precisely drawn sketches made directly from nature. His most notable picture of his early works are Dedham Vale (1802), 'A Church Porch' (The Church Porch, East Bergholt) (1809), Dedham Vale: Morning (1811), Landscape: Boys Fishing (1813, 102x126cm), Boatbuilding (1814), Wivenhoe Park (1816, 56x101cm), Weymouth Bay (1816). Flatford Mill (1817, 102x127cm) was his last work of the period, created en plein-air.
        He married Maria Bicknell in 1816 and they settled in London. After 1816 he changed the method of his work turning away from realistic agrarian landscapes such as Landscape: Ploughing Scene in Suffolk (A Summerland) (1814). Now he was working mostly in his studio in London and had to work out the image from his memory, starting each picture from a full-size sketch. The sketches enabled his memory to develop gradually until everything he could remember about the scene was satisfactorily suggested. At this point he would begin the finished painting. Each of his large canvass starting with The White Horse (1819) and continuing through Landscape: Noon (The Hay-Wain) (1821), The Lock (A Boat Passing a Lock) (1824), The Leaping Horse (1824), The Cornfield (1826) was fulfilled in this way.
        Although he never was popular in England, some of his works were exhibited in Paris and achieved instant fame. In 1829 he was finally elected a Royal Academician.  His other important works of these period were Hampstead Heath (c.1820), Salisbury Cathedral, from the Bishop's Grounds (1823), A Mill at Gillingham in Dorset (Parham's Mill) (1826), Dedham Vale (1828), Hadleigh Castle (1829), Old Sarum (1829), Salisbury Cathedral, from the Meadows (1831). He died working on Arundel Mill and Castle (1837).
— The artist's father, Golding Constable, was a wealthy man who owned mills. His business consisted of grinding wheat raised in the local fields and shipping it to the London market. The fact that Constable was born into the midst of the practical realities of country life has a direct bearing on his career and is reflected throughout his painting. He showed intellectual promise as a child and was brought up for the church; when this idea was abandoned, he was trained to enter his father's business. By this time he had already conceived an enthusiasm for painting. This interest was fostered by his friendship with an amateur painter, John Dunthorne, a local plumber and glazier, and was further encouraged by the landscape painter Sir George Beaumont, a patron of the arts. Constable's determination to make painting his profession was sealed by his acceptance as a probationer in the Royal Academy Schools in 1799, when he was 23.
     At this time his performance did not reveal any marked promise; his execution was labored and his drawing from life weakly academic. But he already had a clear mental image of the type of pictures he wanted to paint and worked doggedly to overcome his technical defects. Seven or eight years after he had started his formal training, he discovered how to embody his idea of the English countryside in a manner both more realistic and more spirited than his predecessors. There were some modest successes to record in this period of self-training. He exhibited at the Royal Academy shows annually from 1802, with one single exception in 1804. He went on two of the sketching expeditions that it was then the practice for landscape painters to undertake, going to the Peak District, Derbyshire, in 1801 and the Lake District in 1806. He painted portraits of the Suffolk and Essex farmers and their wives and in 1805 attempted an altarpiece of Christ Blessing the Children, in the manner of Benjamin West. When he took stock of his progress after his return from the Lake District, however, he realized that he had been attempting too wide a range of subject and style, thus dissipating his energies. He then determined to concentrate on the scenes that had delighted him as a boy: the village lanes, the fields and meadows running down to the River Stour, the slow progress of barges drawn by tow horses, the bustle of vessels passing the locks at Flatford or Dedham.
     In the years 1809 to 1816 he established his mastery and evolved his individual manner; but these were years of personal stress. He was obliged to live much of each year in London, where his professional associates were to be found and where he could participate in exhibitions. Constable was uneasy at these enforced absences from the countryside, in which he felt most at home, and tried to pay yearly visits to Suffolk. The assiduity with which he studied the landscape on these visits is shown by two pocket sketchbooks, one of 1813 and one of 1814, which are still intact. These contain between them more than 200 small sketches made in a limited area around his home village and reflect most aspects of the summer life of the fields and the river.
     Constable fell in love with Maria Bicknell in 1809 and married her on 02 October 1816. Once Constable had established himself and his wife in a London home, he set to work to show what he could achieve in his art. He was 40 years old and had painted a handful of accomplished pictures, which were original but on a small scale. These included Dedham Vale: Morning (1811); Boatbuilding near Flatford Mill (1815); The Stour Valley and Dedham Village (1815). These paintings were still products of the years of preparation, however. Most significant was the large number of small oil sketches and drawings that were to form the basis of his future and more ambitious painting. These sketches, of which he made a considerable number after 1808, were painted in the open air in front of the subject. They are most frequently in oils on paper about 30 centimeters wide, and they record the form of the landscape, the colors that predominate, and also the more evanescent qualities of atmosphere and the reflection of light on particular details. The sketches are now recognized to be among Constable's most individual achievements and to have been unique at the time they were painted. To the artist,however, they were means to an end. His main ambition was to embody his concept of the Suffolk countryside in a series of larger canvases monumental enough to make an impression in the annual summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy. The first attempt was Flatford Mill on the River Stour which he exhibited in 1817. It shows a reach of the river running up to the mill, in which Golding Constable had lived until within two years of John Constable's birth, bordered by a meadow that has just been scythed.
     This work was succeeded by a series of six paintings that are now among his best known and most highly regarded works. In order of exhibition they are The White Horse; Stratford Mill; The Hay-Wain; View on the Stour near Dedham; The Lock; The Leaping Horse. These six canvases portray scenes on the River Stour that were easily within the compass of Constable's childhood walks; between the most easterly, The Hay-Wain, and the most westerly, Stratford Mill, there is hardly more than three kilometers distance in a direct line. To this unity of place is joined a unity of subject matter. With the exception of The Hay-Wain, all show barges being maneuvered along the canals. The appearance in these works of the fruits of Constable's deep, unprecedented study of the formation of clouds, the color of meadows and trees, and the effect of light glistening on leaves and water enables them to communicate the concrete actuality of these everyday-life country scenes, as well as the feeling they evoked in him.
     This series of Stour scenes was interrupted in 1823, when Constable's chief exhibit was a view of Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, which was intended to be a record of an architectural monument, transmuted into the artist's own idiom by framing the spire between overarching trees, by emphasizing the play of light and shade on the Gothic stonework, and by setting the whole under a sky in which rain is impending. This romantic treatment did not please the Bishop but was admired by the Bishop's nephew and Constable's old friend, Archdeacon John Fisher, who had already shown his faith in the artistby buying The White Horse at the exhibition of 1819.
     There is a revealing correspondence between Constable and Bishop Fisher, who commissioned the painting of the Salisbury Cathedral. In it the painter gives his most intimate thoughts on his art without concealment or false modesty. There was much he could be satisfied with at this time. He was aware that he had achieved in his art a great deal of what he had set out to do. In addition, his work had deeply impressed the painters of the French Romantic school. Théodore Géricault had admired The Hay-Wain (559x800pix, 134kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2004pix) on its first exhibition in 1821; and when this work (along with the View on the Stour near Dedham) was shown at the Paris Salon in 1824, it not only created a sensation but inspired Eugène Delacroix to repaint parts of his Massacre at Chios (1824; 600x495pix, 62kb _ ZOOM to 1501x1266pix, 2597pix)(compare the preparatory sketch; 600x544pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1270pix)
     Meanwhile the presence, from 1819, of Hampstead scenes and, from 1824, of Brighton scenes among his repertoire of subjects indicates a deepening shadow over his domestic happiness. Mrs. Constable had long been delicate, and Constable took houses in these places in search of purer air. Her death from consumption in 1828, at the age of 41, was a loss from which he never fully recovered, though he bestirred himself into activity for the sake of his seven children, in whom he delighted. His financial situation had been eased by a large legacy from his father-in-law, but from this time an increased restlessness is to be found in his paintings. Hadleigh Castle and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows show his growing recourse to broken accents of color, somber tones, and stormy skies. It was in 1829 also that he began his preparations for the publication of English Landscape Scenery, a selection of mezzotints executed by David Lucas from Constable's paintings and sketches in which the same dramatic qualities of light and shade are translated into a black-and-white medium. The admiration of his friend, the US-born artist C.R. Leslie, prompted the writing of the Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, R.A. This biography was first published in 1843 and still remains an indispensable source of information on Constable.
     In the 1820s the use of color by Constable's great contemporary and rival in landscape painting, J.M.W. Turner, was becoming bolder and even more uninhibited. This may have contributed to the greater readiness for change that we see in Constable's late works. His Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall Stairs is a monumental record of the opening ceremonial, painted in a high key of color. His use of watercolor became more frequent, and in 1834, after he had been seriously ill, he sent no oils at all to the Royal Academy, depending for his principal exhibit on a large and remarkable watercolor, Old Sarum. A visit to Arundel in the same summer imbued him with enthusiasm for a new type of countryside dominated by steep wooded slopes.
     In 1836 Constable sent The Cenotaph at Coleorton to the Royal Academy exhibition. It was the last painting he showed in his lifetime. When he died, the painting on which he had been working the day before, Arundel Mill and Castle (1837; 600x856pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1997pix), was sufficiently completed to be shown posthumously at the next Academy exhibition. At his death his reputation was limited, but those who admired his work did so intensely. This admiration grew slowly throughout the 19th century, becoming more widespread as his sketches became available and their freshness and spontaneity were recognized. In 1843 his first biographer, C.R. Leslie, wrote that he was “the most genuine painter of English landscape,” and that is a judgment now almost universally reaffirmed.

LINKS
A Woman (64x53cm)
Arundel Mill (1835, 22x30cm) — Salisbury CathedralWhite Horse in Ferry _ detail
The Stour Valley with Stratford Saint Mary (1800, 600x920pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2147pix)
View of Black Brook Over Long Meadow Toward Old Lecture House, Dedham (1800, 600x844pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1969pix)
Wivenhoe Park, Essex (1816; 541x1000pix, 100kb _ ZOOM to 1400x2613pix)
Golding Constable's Flower Garden (1815, 33 x 50.8cm)
Golding Constable's Kitchen Garden (1815, 33x51cm) — Mill Stream (1814, 71x91cm)
A Water~Mill (1812, 64x89cm) — Stratford Mill (1820)
Cottage, Rainbow, Mill (1837, 88x112cm) — Malvern Hall (1809)
Flatford Mill from the Lock (1811, 25x30cm) — Mrs. James Pulham, Sr. (Frances Amys) (1818)
Maria Bicknell (Mrs. John Constable) (1816) — The Young Waltonians (50x76cm)
Ladies From The Family Of Mr William Mason Of Colchester (60x50cm)
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831, 152x190cm) _ Constable painted Salisbury Cathedral many times. Here the cathedral is set against a stormy sky – the preceding rainfall has darkened the stone to an impressive and dramatic black. Painted shortly after the death of his wife the painting can be read symbolically. The passing of the storm, the rainbow, and the church’s spire - which seems to pierce through the cloud to bright sky beyond - might all suggest Constable’s faith giving him hope and support after his loss.
A View on Hampstead Heath with Harrow in the Distance (1822, 29x50cm; 3/4 size)
Hampstead Heath Looking Towards Harrow (1821, 70x56cm) _ Constable first rented a house in Hampstead in 1819, but it was in the summers of 1821 and 1822 that he made the most of the high vantage point and open spaces of Hampstead Heath to study clouds, and sketch distant views. Here he combines a panoramic view looking northwards with a dramatic and complex sky. The picture is inscribed on the back ‘5 o’ clock afternoon: August 1821 very fine bright & wind after rain slightly in the morning’ and from a study of the weather records it has been suggested it was painted on August 14th. — In a letter written to his closest friend John Fisher, John Constable famously wrote that ‘skies must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of Landscape in which the sky is not the “key note” the standard of “Scale” and the chief “Organ of Sentiment”… the sky is the source of light in nature – and governs everything.’ Constable wrote these words at the end of the Summer of 1821 after he had spent the previous four months producing an extraordinary series of cloud studies painted on the hills of Hampstead Heath, which he was to continue the following year. The earliest studies included landscape elements but he soon turned his attention to the sky alone carefully recording the time of day and prevailing weather conditions on the back of his sketches. Constable’s cloud studies would have been used as raw material for his large-scale finished landscapes, but he appears to have relished the challenge of capturing the fleeting appearance of clouds for its own sake. He sometimes looks straight up at the clouds above his head – a viewpoint that could hardly be included in a conventional landscape.
Landscape with Clouds (1822, 48x58cm) _ This vigorously painted sketch of a stormy sky over a darkened landscape was probably painted at the same time that Constable was painting his cloud studies on Hampstead Heath. But here there are no notes on the back to record time of day or weather conditions and the sketch itself has less of the feeling of a ‘scientific’ study than an attempt to capture a mood. It may even have been painted from memory – the landscape recalls a view from Constable’s father’s house in East Bergholt, Suffolk.

Died on a 31 March:

1965 Mario Mafai, Roman painter born on 12 February 1902. Mafai was the central figure of a group of artists called the Scuola Romana. His preference for lyrical, intimate subject-matter contrasted with the monumental neo-classicism of the Novecento Italiano. From 1922 until 1925 he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. There he met his future wife, the artist Antonietta Raphael, who introduced him to the work of the École de Paris. By 1927 the painter Scipione and the sculptor Marino Mazzacurati [1907–1969] gathered regularly in Mafai’s studio, giving rise to an association known as the Scuola di Via Cavour. During this period Mafai painted views of the River Tiber in a deliberately unschooled manner, self-portraits and still-lifes such as Quartered Bullock (1930), reminiscent of Chaïm Soutine. His series of still-lifes called Dried Flowers was begun after a year in Paris in 1930.

^ 1925 Armando Spadini, Italian painter born on 29 July 1883. He studied initially at the Scuola d’Arte Industriale in Florence. From 1898 he frequented the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the Accademia di Belle Arti, where he met Giovanni Fattori, Ardengo Soffici and Adolfo De Carolis. Spadini worked as a decorator of maiolica, an illustrator and a fresco painter. In 1909 he won the Pensionato Artistico Nazionale, and in the following year he moved to Rome. There he became friends with the critic Emilio Cecchi who had also come to Rome from Florence and who introduced him to the informal literary and artistic group associated with the famous third room of the Caffè Aragno. Spadini exhibited initially in 1913 at the first Secession in Rome; his painting was immediately and universally praised, even among the ranks of the avant-garde. Following his initial success he took part in all the most important exhibitions of the day; in addition to the Secessions, the collective show at the Casina Valadier in Rome (1918), the Primaverile Fiorentina of 1922 as part of the group associated with Valori plastici and in 1924 at the Biennale in Venice, where he showed at least 50 of his works. He is generally considered the most important follower in Rome of Impressionism. His painting is, however, influenced to a greater degree by the Munich Secession, which became known in Italy through the magazine Jugend: Illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben Jugend and through the participation of German artists at the Venice Biennales. This influence is evident in such paintings as the portrait of Signora De Carolis with her Daughters (1908) or Music on the Pincio (1913). His innate decorative talent, familiarity with the Old Masters and typically Italian fluency and sensuality made him an important painter in the first quarter of the 20th century. — Armida[bathers]

^ 1886 Francis Augustus Silva, US Hudson River School painter specialized in Landscapes, born in 1835. — A View Of Storm King On The Hudson

1866 Johan Hendrik Louis Meijer (or Meyer), Dutch painter born on 09 March 1809. He received his training at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, where he was a student of Pieter George Westenberg [1791–1873] and Jan Willem Pieneman [1779–1853]. In his youth he worked with the landscape painter Joseph Jodocus Moerenhout [1801–1874]. From 1827 to 1830 Meijer studied in Paris; thereafter he spent a further three years in Amsterdam. From 1833 to 1839 he worked in Deventer. In his early years he was particularly fond of painting mountainous landscapes, woods and ice scenes. From 1839 to 1841 he was again in Amsterdam, where a change occurred in his work and he began to paint seascapes, sometimes with a historical setting (e.g. the Conquest of Palembang, 1857). With such paintings he established an international reputation. In 1842 in Paris, where he had by then settled, he received a gold medal at the Salon with Fire on the Ship ‘The India’ and Fisherman on the Coast of Normandy. He also attracted attention at many exhibitions in the Netherlands between 1826 and 1863. — Matthijs Maris was an assistant of Meijer.

1763 Jan Peeter Verdussen, Flemish artist born in 1700.


Born on a 31 March:


^ 1902 André Lanskoy, Russian French painter and tapestry designer who died on 22 August 1976. The son of a Russian count, he grew up in Saint-Petersburg, where he was educated in the Corps des Pages, and where he was impressed at the age of 15 by murals by the stage designer Sergey Sudeykin, with their use of folk patterning and traditional colour. His first attempts at painting (in watercolor and gouache) were made while he was a refugee in Kiev in 1919 with his White Russian regiment. In the spring of 1921 he managed to reach Paris and immediately began painting in earnest. He found Sudeykin in Paris and studied for a short time with him and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and he discovered the work of van Gogh and Matisse. He also met Chaïm Soutine and painted some Expressionist figures and still-lifes under his influence. In 1924 he was discovered by Wilhelm Uhde, who bought a number of paintings and recommended him to the Galerie Bing, where he had his first one-man show in 1925. Although the first paintings Lanskoy made in Paris were of imaginary subjects, he soon began working from nature, and his work developed through a succession of phases. These included paintings with many small brushstrokes and thick pigment, followed in 1928–1929 by pictures that became much brighter under the influence of the Impressionists and of a stay in the south of France. In the 1930s he painted mainly single figures and people in interiors with semi-naive drawing and thinly painted areas of luminous color, with a tendency towards monochrome. The colors were usually somewhat muted through the inclusion of gray.

^ 1843 Peder Henrik Kristian Zahrtmann, Danish painter who died on 22 June 1917.— {Zahrtmann was art man.}— Zahrtmann studied in Copenhagen at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skønne Kunster in 1864–8 under Wilhelm Marstrand, Jørgen Roed, Niels Simonsen [1807–1885] and Frederik Vermehren. He worked as a teacher and as Head of the Kunstnernes Studieskoler in Copenhagen from 1885 to 1908. His works can be divided roughly into history and genre paintings. From the outset he was attracted to the great figures of 17th-century Danish history, especially Princess Eleanor Christine, whose autobiography Jammers-Minde, first published in 1869, provided Zahrtmann with subject-matter for 18 large paintings (1870–1916). The Princess fell from grace because of her husband’s alleged high treason and was imprisoned for 22 years. In Eleanor Christine is Undressed and Searched by the Servants of Queen Sofie Amalie (3 versions: 1886, 1888, 1894) he experimented with light effects in the manner of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, possibly inspired by Gerrit van Honthorst the portrayal of The Princess (1647) by Gerrit van Honthorst [1590-1656]. When Zahrtmann first visited Italy (1875–1878) he concentrated on genre painting, using ripe and heavy local color to develop a personal style, which was often criticized for being over gaudy. Although the narratives of his pictures are imaginary, he never painted without a model, which often makes his compositions overcrowded. His portraits are among his best works; the Self-portrait of 1913 displays his gift for the broad, monumental figure style.
— As a teacher, Zahrtmann influenced a whole generation of Scandinavian painters, most notably the ‘Fynboerne’: Peter Hansen, Johannes Larsen, Fritz Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich baron von Syberg, Karl Oskar Isaksson, Viggo Thorvald Edvard Weie; and also other students, including Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, Poul Simon Christiansen, Halfdan Egedius [1877-1899] [midget son of Dan Egedius?], August Eiebakke, Thorvald Erichsen, Ludvig Frederik Find, Harald Giersing, Niels Larsen-Stevns, Ejnar August Nielsen, Niels William Scharff, Harald Oskar Sohlberg, Henrik Ingvar Sørensen, Jón Stefánsson, Sigurd Swane. Once upon a time there were a king and a queen (1887; 500x384pix, 45kb)

1798 Michael Neher, German artist who died on 04 December 1876.

1796 Carl Friedrich Zimmermann, German artist who died on 31 July 1820.

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